Welcome to The Giving List Los Angeles, 2023
We are thrilled to present you with this year’s edition of The Giving List Los Angeles.
Los Angeles is a wonderfully diverse tapestry of people and communities and locations and causes. In many ways it’s a microcosm of everything that is both great and complex about our country. And nothing creates a more important safety net for the pieces of the complicated puzzle that is L.A. than the region’s nonprofit sector.
The Giving List was created out of the belief that storytelling, one of the most powerful tools we have as humans, is vastly underutilized in educating donors on the foundational work being done by nonprofits.
What you have in your hands is a compendium of powerful stories describing the work being done by some of the most impactful nonprofit organizations in the Los Angeles area. Organizations on the front lines of recovery, pressing for social and racial justice, uplifting our children and families, supporting the arts, and fighting to preserve our precious natural world.
We hope this book will be a useful tool as you sort through the many vital nonprofit organizations that depend on your support for survival.
These are fast-moving times with an ever-growing list of causes that demand our attention. As we move through COVID and the inequities it’s laid bare, a cataclysmic housing crisis, and the ongoing call for greater racial and gender equity, there are also other pressing, wide-ranging issues: the war in Ukraine, gun violence, an assault on women’s reproductive rights, and an uptick in racism, antisemitism, and hate, all while the wildfires and drought underscore a deepening climate crisis and its far-reaching implications.
If you’re a longtime donor to Los Angeles nonprofits, we hope this book can help you be more thoughtful in your giving as you’re inundated by all of the needs mounting around us.
If, on the other hand, you’re newer to giving and just beginning to think about where your philanthropic passions may lie, we hope we can help direct you to some of the wonderful opportunities that would make a huge difference in this region and beyond.
In either case, our intent is to help you break through some of the noise created by so many pressing needs by bringing your attention to some of the most important giving opportunities in this region.
The nonprofits in this book are not the only ones worthy of your support. But we do believe that those represented in these pages strongly reflect Los Angeles’ vibrant nonprofit and philanthropic culture. They are organizations that are doing important work, at an important time, and are worthy of your strong consideration. We hope that the work we’ve done to tell their stories will move you as much as they have moved us!
This book would not be possible without the help and support of some of Los Angeles’ premier institutions. We are deeply grateful to California State University, Northridge, J.P. Morgan, the Holocaust Museum LA, Marco Rufo and Craig Knizek at The Agency, Southern California Public Radio, and The Annenberg Foundation for their partnership in this endeavor. The impact of your ongoing commitment to supporting the Los Angeles’ nonprofit community is immeasurable.
We hope you are as inspired by reading this book as we have been in making it.
Sincerely,
Gwyn Lurie
CEO, The Montecito Journal Media Group